Electronic filing of tax returns surged 15 percent in New York

The Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday morning that electronic filing of tax returns is running 15.7 percent ahead of year-ago figures, with more than 6.8 million individual fedral income tax returns filed as of April 21.

The figure tops the 6.2 million figure for all of 2009, and is a record.

Of the 6.8 million returns filed so far, 1.6 million were filed on home computers, the IRS said. That figure is 15 percent above last year’s number.

The IRS says electronically filed returns typically have error rates of less than 1 percent, compared to 20 percent for those filed on paper.

Taxpayers who requested an extension will be able to file electronically through Oct. 17, IRS spokeswoman Dianne Besunder said.

6 Responses

The federal and state governments ask/urge/expect me to: 1) purchase tax-preparation software, and, 2) pay a fee for electronic filing. They save a buck or two and I’m out maybe $60, and for what?

No, thank you, I’ll continue to trek to the library each year, pick up my free forms, complete the returns, and pay a total of 88 cents in postage to file them. If I was really lazy I could print the forms at home.

And if you file electronically you are now in their database. Just what you need – the IRS has every line of your return in their database – and your SS#, name, address & email address…does anyone else see the opportunity here for abuse??

Turbotax was about $40 shipped. Took less than 40 minutes to complete state and Federal, even with all the obscure forms I needed to deal with. No cost to drive to get the forms. It would have taken me hours to fill out the forms by hand so my time that would be used for all that manual labor(and hopefully anyone else’s) is worth a lot more than $40!